The Circle

from?”
    “Yeah, yeah. Once I knew their names, I could find all their addresses. Some had moved
     a few times, but I could cross-referencewith the years I might have been with them. I actually did this whole timeline of
     when I might have been at each place. Most of them were in Kentucky. A few in Missouri.
     One was in Tennessee.”
    “So that’s it?”
    “Well, I don’t know. A couple are dead, so … I don’t know. I might just drive by some
     of these houses. Just to fill in some gaps. I don’t know. Oh,” he said, turning over,
     brightening, “I did have a couple revelations. I mean, most of the stuff was standard
     memories of these people. But there was one family who had an older girl, she was
     about fifteen when I was twelve. I didn’t remember much, but I know she was my first
     serious sexual fantasy.”
    Those words,
sexual fantasy
, had an immediate effect on Mae. In the past, whenever they’d been uttered, with
     or by any man, it led to the discussion of fantasies, and some degree of enacting
     one or another fantasy. Which she and Francis did, even if briefly. His fantasy was
     to leave the room and knock on the door, pretending to be a lost teenager knocking
     on the door of a beautiful suburban house. Her job was to be a lonely housewife and
     invite him in, scantily clad and desperate for company.
    And so he knocked, and she greeted him at the door, and he told her he was lost, and
     she told him he should get out of those old clothes, that he could put on some of
     her husband’s. Francis liked that so much that things accelerated quickly, and in
     seconds he was undressed and she was on top of him. He lay beneath her for a minute
     or two, letting Mae rise and fall, looking up at her with the wonderment of a boy
     at the zoo. Then his eyes closed, and he went into paroxysms, emitting a brief squeal
     before grunting his arrival.
    Now, as Francis brushed his teeth, Mae, exhausted and feeling notlove but something close to contentment, arranged herself under the thick comforter
     and faced the wall. The clock said 3:11.
    Francis emerged from the bathroom.
    “I have a second fantasy,” he said, pulling the blanket over him and bringing his
     face close to Mae’s neck.
    “I’m inches from sleep,” she muttered.
    “No, nothing strenuous. No activity required. This is just a verbal thing.”
    “Okay.”
    “I want you to rate me,” he said.
    “What?”
    “Just a rating. Like you do at CE.”
    “Like from 1 to 100?”
    “Exactly.”
    “Rate what? Your performance?”
    “Yes.”
    “C’mon. I don’t want to do that.”
    “It’s just for fun.”
    “Francis. Please. I don’t want to. It takes the enjoyment out of it for me.”
    Francis sat up with a loud sigh. “Well,
not
knowing takes the enjoyment out of it for me.”
    “Not knowing what?”
    “How I did.”
    “How you
did
? You did fine.”
    Francis made a loud sound of disgust.
    She turned over. “What’s the matter?”
    “Fine?” he said. “I’m
fine
?”
    “Oh god. You’re great. You’re perfect. When I say fine, I just mean that you couldn’t
     do better.”
    “Okay,” he said, moving closer to her. “Then why didn’t you say that before?”
    “I thought I did.”
    “You think ‘fine’ is the same as ‘perfect’ and ‘couldn’t do better’?”
    “No. I know it’s not. I’m just tired. I should have been more precise.”
    A self-satisfied smile overtook Francis’s face. “You know you just proved my point.”
    “What point?”
    “We just argued about all this, about the words you used and what they meant. We didn’t
     understand their meaning the same way, and we went around and around about it. But
     if you had just used a number I would have understood right away.” He kissed her shoulder.
    “Okay. I get it,” she said, and closed her eyes.
    “Well?” he said.
    She opened her eyes to Francis’s pleading mouth.
    “Well what?”
    “You’re still not going to give me a number?”
    “You really want a number?”
    “Mae! Of course I do.”
    “Okay, a hundred.”
    She turned to the wall again.
    “That’s the number?”
    “It is. You get a perfect 100.”
    Mae felt like she could hear him grinning.
    “Thank you,” he said, and kissed the back of her head. “Night.”
    The room was grand, on the top floor of the Victorian Era, with its epic views, its
     glass ceiling. Mae entered and was greeted by most of the Gang of 40, the group of
     innovators who routinely